Lorena Rodríguez is a multidisciplinary artist, cultural practitioner, and peace educator whose work explores the intersections of creativity, collective memory, and social transformation. With a Master’s degree in Peace Studies and Conflict Mediation from the International Christian University (ICU) in Japan, she has co-created sensory, artistic, and educational experiences across the Americas and Asia that foster social and environmental justice while nurturing collective imagination and systems rooted in care, well-being, and creativity.

Shaped by more than a decade of learning at the crossroads of ancestral wisdom, art, and science, Lorena works through performance, storytelling, poetry, textiles, and culinary art. Her practice cultivates new ways of relating and opens spaces for dialogue, reflection, and unlearning around issues of diversity, knowledge, and resistance.

In 2023, she co-founded Chicha Fest, a community-based process that builds collective art experiences and serves as a grassroots school for sustainable agriculture, art, and science in Sacramento. Lorena has worked for over a decade alongside Indigenous and folk communities of the Abya Yala, and in California, she has collaborated with Latine communities affected by incarceration and the death penalty—experiences that continue to shape her creative vision.

Her artistic practice is deeply informed by her exploration of her own roots and by her experience as a brown, migrant woman. Lorena’s work moves beyond aesthetic contemplation and spectacle, positioning art as a catalyst for collective care and as a medium through which new forms of coexistence can emerge.

Featured Image: Lorena Rodríguez teaching the workshop, “The Art of Chicha: History, Culture & Resistance,” held in Sacramento, California, 2025. Photograph by Julian Galeano.